You're reading: Learning English can be a painfully slow undertaking

The grades are in for 15,000 cops who have been on crash courses in English language ahead of Euro 2012 in June.

The teachers are far from impressed.

With tens of thousands of fans heading to the country for the tournament, officials have been cramming basic English. Transport, medical and security staff have studied hard, teachers say, but police officers have come out bottom of the class.

“We need to teach them how to give directions to cathedrals and other places of interest around the city. But the problem is very few of them have any idea about these prominent places of Kyiv at all and their locations,” said Olha Nytenko, head of the foreign languages department at the National Police Academy.

She said teachers have to first show officers a film about Kyiv in Ukrainian and then switch to learning it in English.

Another problem, Nytenko said, is that most cops lack motivation. “We asked the Interior Ministry to send us people who actually want to learn. Or to come up with motivational tools, like raising salaries for those who do learn,” she said.

Visitors have much better chances of being understood by staff at Boryspil International Airport and employees of the central railway station, who have also taken English classes. Their teachers say they were the most diligent and always did their homework. English was also taught to Emergency Ministry staff, doctors and employees of the security service.

Despite the teachers’ disappointment with police officers’ performance, all of those who sat an oral exam passed it.
“The exam consists of answering professional questions. Traffic officers are asked about vehicles, road signs and giving directions,” said Vira Mykytenko, a teacher at the academy.

She says some failed, but were sent away to study until they came back and passed.

When the project of English courses started in 2010, the evaluation system was different but showed very disappointing results for the police as every third cop failed it.

The results were much better for border guards and Emergency Ministry employees, two-thirds of whom received an “excellent” grade, according to Iryna Seryakova, deputy head of Kyiv’s Linguistic

University who taught English to state employees in 2010.

Since classes were not much of a help for most, the Interior Ministry decided to rely on books and gadgets. All policemen who are placed in city centers during the Euro 2012 championship will be armed with pocket phrasebooks and some will also be equipped with electronic voice translators that the Internal Ministry bought in January.

According to the ministry, they purchased 1,500 Ectaco iTRAVL devices that translate words and phrases into seven languages, including English, German and Spanish. The devices have cost state budget Hr 5.55 million.

While most police officers might rely on aids, some are already improvising – by calling their teachers.

“I always give students my cell phone number just in case, and a while ago I got a call from a policeman in trouble,” teacher Mykytenko said. “He said he was on the street with the foreigner who apparently was in some kind of trouble, but the policeman could not completely understand what had happened. He passed the phone to the tourist and I helped them communicate. It turned out that the foreigner had had all his belongings stolen downtown. Later, the policeman called me again to report that they had found the thief.”

She said that for many of her students meeting a foreigner is a challenge not only because of the language barrier but because of fear: “They worry and forget even what little they know. I always teach them first of all to calm down, to ask the foreigner to speak slowly, and to ask him to use synonyms if he doesn’t understand.”

Interior Ministry spokesman Volodymyr Polishchuk said fans should not expect too much from police officers in a country where most people struggle with foreign languages.
“Learning takes time and one should not expect quick results. But we are slowly getting there. Just last week we started English in my own department of information. We have already learned the alphabet,” Polishchuk said.

While the police learn and rely on phrasebooks and calling their teachers, host cities hope to compensate for the lack of English knowledge among state employees with thousands of their volunteers, many of them students or foreigners. Most of them will be placed in city centers, airports and bus and train stations. Some will be attached to policemen and medical personnel on duty.

Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected]